CONNECTED TOGETHER THROUGH SPACE AND TIME
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I was driving through the small city streets of Bellingham, Washington, recently with my in-laws Bob and Diane on our way to dinner, when out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a large silver rocket ship. Both Bob and my daughter have a deep affinity for rockets, so it made sense that I slowed down. Behind the rocket I saw the signature stenciled font of a Before I Die Wall. I spontaneously turned into the parking lot and announced, “I have a surprise for you!” They eyed me wearily. I coaxed them out of the car and faced them in front of the long, black chalkboard. Expressing my excitement of seeing a #BeforeIDie Wall for the first time in real life, I explained the invitation to add a wish to a global community art installation. Together we walked the length of the wall reading people’s declarations. I encouraged everyone to choose a chalk color and asked, “What do you want before you die?”
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Jackie Hauer is an INELDA-certified end-of-life doula and hospice volunteer who provides compassionate, person-centered support to individuals and families at the end of life. She also specializes in yoga for grief and bereavement, offering mind-body practices that help people navigate loss with greater awareness and care.
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When and why did you decided to become and end-of-life doula?
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I’ve been holding space for people at the end of life—and for the loved ones who walk alongside them—since 2014. The true call to pursue this work formally came in 2019, when I accompanied a young friend in her journey with colon cancer. Supporting her through that time shaped me profoundly and led me to pursue this path as an end-of-life doula with intention and devotion. I completed the INELDA end-of-life doula training in December of 2020, started my certification in 2021, and completed it in 2024.
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IN-PERSON END-OF-LIFE DOULA TRAINING
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February 5, 2026 to Febuary 8, 2026
THU 1pm – 5pm PT, FRI/SAT 9am – 6pm PT, SUN 1pm – 5pm PT
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Location: Santa Monica, CA
Educators: Nzinga Abdullah-Aziz & Erika Lim
Price: $895 (discounts available for members, students & military)
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IMMERSIVE END-OF-LIFE DOULA TRAINING
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February 19, 2026 to February 22, 2026
FRI 6pm – 10pm ET & SAT 10am – 7pm ET
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Location: ZOOM
Educators: Omni Kitts Ferrara & Neiasha Russel
Price: $895 (discounts available for members, students & military)
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Preparing for End of Life for Dummies
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Virginia Chang, PhD, is an INELDA-certified end-of-life doula, educator, and writer. She supports the dying and their loved ones to approach dying in a positive, meaningful, and affirming way. She teaches at the University of Vermont with the End-of-Life Doula Professional Certificate program. She has written extensively on death, mortality, and doula care. In Preparing for the End of Life for Dummies, Virginia offers a positive and meaningful approach to end-of-life planning that helps readers make the most of the time they and their loved ones are granted. She walks readers through specific actions and decisions they can take to arrange for the selection of a health care team, organize and make choices about funeral and burial options, and ensure they have the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual support they need.
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My therapist told me at the end of our session that she felt compelled to say something to me. I said of course. There are only a few people in my life whose opinions and insights I respect, and she is one of them. She has seen me through the highest highs and through the lowest lows, riding the roller coaster of grief, guilt, and so much more. She said, “I am proud of you.”
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Gathering Circle for All Members
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This year, INELDA will host four Gathering Circles. This member benefit is a space for community, grief, and healing. As INELDA is an organization committed to normalizing conversations around death, dying, loss, and grief, this gathering circle is created to provide space for these topics as we sit in company with one another. We hope to meet the issues of this time with a doula mindset. We will make space for feelings of sadness, rage, despair, anger, and inequities in a facilitated structure. The evening will be hosted by member coordinator Janine Cuthbertson and led by Amanda Faison, an INELDA-trained doula and cofounder of A&R Equity.
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Spring Certification Cohort Open Until February 15
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Looking to deepen your doula practice in a supportive setting? Join our spring certification cohort by February 15. INELDA’s certification program is a comprehensive one-year cohort-based program designed to support you through mentorship, peer review, and continuing education, with two cycles that start in either October or April. Founded and guided by INELDA’s core competencies, the certification program engages and applies the INELDA Doula Approach, culminating in the design and practice of the doula’s field specialization of choice.
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Alisha Bartlett Joins INELDA as Registration Coordinator
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As a birth doula, Alisha has supported families in navigating their birth experiences through compassionate care, education, and advocacy. She has worked with multiple nonprofit organizations, specialized in attachment parenting, and supported families as a birth doula and childbirth educator. Alisha began her nonprofit journey working with unhoused mothers and their children.She looks forward to supporting INELDA’s learners and continuing her commitment to family-centered care. Alisha has a deep passion for all people having autonomy, tenderness, and support as they meet life’s transitions.
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Serious Illness Doula Coordinator Position in South Carolina
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Care of the Piedmont in Greenwood, South Carolina is hiring! The advanced illness doula program coordinator is responsible for developing, implementing, and managing a comprehensive program that provides emotional, spiritual, and practical support to individuals and families during the end-of-life journey. This role ensures high-quality services, recruits and trains volunteer doulas, and collaborates with health care providers, palliative care and hospice teams, and community organizations to enhance compassionate care.
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INELDA-trained doula Kim Burgess was profiled with her client in an AARP article on January 14. “How Doulas Help Caregivers Navigate Dementia” speaks to the role doulas can provide those living with dementia. “Unlike rotating staff, a doula is a steady presence who knows the person’s history, personal references and rhythms, especially as dementia or serious illness progresses,” Burgess says. The article also features INELDA-trained doula Lori Rizzo and INELDA’s director of education, Omni Kitts Ferrara.
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Sparking Innovation: Future Models of Care with Dr. Naheed Dosani, Palliative Care Doctor for the Homeless
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January 28 | WED 7 – 8:30pm ET
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As a palliative care physician to the homeless and health justice activist, Dr. Naheed Dosani is dedicated to advancing equitable access to health care for people experiencing structural vulnerabilities such as poverty and homelessness. These efforts include founding and leading the Palliative Education and Care for the Homeless (PEACH) Program at the Inner City Health Associates in downtown Toronto, serving as the medical director of Kensington Hospice, health equity lead at Kensington Health, health equity expert advisor at the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, and palliative care physician at St. Michael’s Hospital at Unity Health Toronto.
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Dr. Naheed Dosani will join us in a conversation around developing unique care model solutions. End-of-life doulas are in positions to act as system changers and create community-driven care that is outside the traditional medical models. This webinar will draw on Dr. Dosani’s own model of PEACH as a prototype that is addressing community needs. Come with the deathcare issues within your own community as a launch point to consider new solutions.
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Dr. Dosani shares his passion for palliative care and health equity with learners as an assistant professor with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. As a researcher, he is appointed as an investigator with the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St Michael’s Hospital’s Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, with a special interest in health system innovation and advancing access to equity-oriented care for structurally vulnerable populations. As a health systems leader, he serves on the board of directors for the Canadian Medical Association. Dr. Dosani has received many prestigious honours for his trailblazing work.
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Cost: Free with INELDA Tier 2 & 3 Membership | Tier 1 and Non-members $15
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“When charging to drive to and from clients, I add $20 an hour for anything over 10 miles, plus the standard IRS rate per mile. I make sure that my clients know this upfront when discussing cost and that this is part of my fees.”
—Holly Strelzik, Center for the Heart
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Shiva is the Jewish tradition of mourning for seven days after a funeral. During shiva, mourners remain home while family, friends, and neighbors take care of their basic needs and offer comfort. Shiva Circle, a new program from Shomer Collective, a group leveraging Jewish wisdom to transform communal culture around death and dying, shifts the work of organizing shiva to a loving circle of support. By helping people to feel held by Jewish tradition and community, Shiva Circle ensures no one has to grieve alone.
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What if the circle of care gets angry at me as a doula? How do I respond?
—Training Participant
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Educator Wilka Roig: I take a deep breath and remember I have remained faithful to our scope, code, and competencies throughout my practice. My next response is to remember that what arises in this space is not about me, and that whatever arises is welcome. Anger is welcome. It is one of the ways people express what they cannot understand, what they cannot wrap their heads around; anger could be an expression of grief. It could be many things or anything, and as a doula I am not there to analyze or interpret. As with everything else in this space of service, the INELDA Doula Approach reminds me to full-self listen, practice self-awareness (and reprocess later if I felt in any way I incited), and engage the external listening cycle. I may reflect back what I hear said or what I observed, and invite its exploration. If the time and space is not conducive, I will offer the possibility of making a time to hold space for what is arising. Of course, if this anger is accompanied with violence, remove yourself from the situation.
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We Were Made for This Moment: Creating a New World as Self-Care
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We are in difficult times. Impose upon that statement what you will. Those of us who do death and grief work are used to holding what is hardest. We hold death, loss, grief, the weight of words left unsaid, and the grief of those losing their loved ones. We hold the injustice of children dying, the ways that medical systems fail people based on demographics, and so many other unfair realities. We hold these things, we hold the humanity of the people present, and we validate the humanity of everyone touched by the loss we are sitting with. We hold what so many can’t. We make bearable what feels unbearable, and when we can’t make it bearable, we sit with the unbearable and help carry the weight of it. We reflect the beauty of an impossibly devastating reality—that we lose the people we love, often in ways that feel unjust or unfair—and we open the door for others to make meaning in their grief and heartbreak.
–Saruh Lacoff
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WHO Commits to Traditional Medicine
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Delegates from more than 100 countries gathered in Delhi in December 2025 to signal a commitment to traditional medicine. This second World Health Organization Global Summit on Traditional Medicine saw leaders advancing the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025-2034, which lays out “a vision for universal access to safe, effective and people-centred traditional, complementary and integrative medicine.”
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Rural Health Gets Federal Boost
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With rural populations facing barriers to the full suite of end-of-life care, news out of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) strikes a hopeful note: All 50 states will benefit from a $50 billion program aimed at supporting rural health care.
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Making Friends with Death
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A recent study of nearly 100 people ages 65 and older found that 70% of participants have a “friendly relationship to death,” the term the researchers use to describe an “affective warmth toward death itself, as a familiar and nonthreatening presence rather than an abstract inevitability.”
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I can feel myself slipping away, fading away, withdrawing
from this life, just as my father did. When the pain you’re in
is so great you can’t think about or pay attention to anything
but your own pain, the rest of the world and all other life
don’t matter.
I think about my friends with dementia, cancer, arthritis, and
how much more pain they are in than I am, but it does no good,
their pain is not mine, and therefore, no matter how magnanimous
I might want to be, their pain is not as important to me as my own.
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© INELDA 2026 International End of Life Doula Association is a
501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization that relies on public support to do it’s work.
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